Temporary Shelter

The acrid smell of disinfectant mingled with the raw scent of some kind of cooling metal fluid, forcing its way into his nostrils and violently dragging Lin Xiao back from the edge of unconsciousness.

His eyelids felt as though they had been welded shut. Every attempt to open them brought splitting headaches and the stubborn, black-hole-like emptiness caused by the -0.159 deep in his soul. The wound in his right calf had temporarily fallen dormant under the suppression of the potent inhibitor, along with its maddening burning numbness. But the sharp pain from the rough debridement and the icy numbness caused by the residual toxins still clearly reminded him of his desperate flight earlier.

He laboriously opened his eyes to a narrow slit.

What entered his field of vision was a cold ceiling, plain to the point of suffocation.

It was deathly pale and completely undecorated. The material seemed to be some kind of high-strength alloy, its smooth surface reflecting the equally pale, icy light cast by the embedded LED strips overhead. There were no windows, only a vent set into the side wall and covered by a fine metal grille. It emitted a continuous, low hum, monotonous as a funeral bell.

The air was dry and constant, carrying the inhuman cleanliness unique to a laboratory. It pressed the stench of sewage and blood lingering on his body firmly beneath the surface of his skin, making them seem even more jarring.

Beneath him was a hard alloy bed frame covered by a thin medical gel pad that was equally devoid of warmth. A gray-white blanket lay over him, its rough material rubbing against his skin.

This was a cage. A cage carefully disguised as a hospital room.

Lin Xiao slowly turned his stiff neck, his vision sweeping across the entire room.

The room was not large, roughly ten square meters. Apart from the alloy hospital bed fixed to the floor beneath him, there was only a small metal table of the same material and the same coldness, fixed against the wall. A transparent cup sat on it, half-filled with clear water, along with a metal tube labeled "Nutritional Paste."

The walls were made of the same deathly pale alloy, smooth enough to reflect blurry figures. Lin Xiao's gaze lingered briefly on several inconspicuous corners—the shadows inside the vent grille, beneath the edge of the metal table, the tiny gaps in the seams between the ceiling light strips... There were extremely faint, almost imperceptible dark-red points of light there, like the eyes of venomous snakes lurking in the dark.

Surveillance with no blind spots. The handiwork of the Special Operations Ninth Division.

Lin Xiao's heart sank. The true nature of Qin Bing's so-called "temporary safe house" was laid bare—a high-level interrogation room doubling as an observation chamber. Protecting a witness was merely a pretext. Observation and control were the core.

He tried to move a trace of his will, attempting to sense the dark-blue light screen in his mind.

Bzzt—!

A violent wave of dizziness and needle-like pain surged over him! The words Source Energy Points: -0.159 seemed to glow with mocking scarlet light as they flashed violently in his consciousness. The light curtain was dim and lifeless. The core pulsed as weakly as a guttering candle, while fine black cracks were clearly visible across the pale-silver patterns along its edges.

The strain had been far too severe! Forcibly activating the preset traps—especially the "logical deadlock" of the final I-beam—had cost far more than expected. At that moment, the modifier was like a guttering candle. Forget analyzing the environment or optimizing itself; even maintaining a basic stable existence seemed precarious.

He painfully raised his uninjured left arm. The movement tugged at the wounds splitting open across his back and the venomous injury in his right leg, making him suck in a sharp breath. He picked up the metal cup from the table, its chill traveling through his palm. He took a small sip. The water slid over his dry, burning throat, bringing a trace of pitiful comfort.

His gaze fell on the tube of "Nutritional Paste." Its dull gray metal casing bore no markings. He twisted off the cap. Inside was a viscous paste that gave off a faint scent of synthetic grains. It was essential for maintaining his bodily functions—and might also be a medium for monitoring his physiological indicators.

Lin Xiao did not hesitate. He squeezed some out and swallowed it with difficulty. The taste was bland, with an indescribable sensation of metallic powder. His stomach gave a faint twitch, and his body instinctively craved an energy supplement. He tried to guide that weak biological energy, attempting to make contact with the light curtain in his mind.

Weak biological energy intake detected... Attempting absorption... Absorption efficiency: 0.0001%... Source Energy Points replenished: 0 (negligible)

Warning! Core stability has not recovered! Forcibly absorbing external energy carries a risk of collapse!

The cold notification sound carried an unequivocal refusal.

Lin Xiao smiled bitterly inwardly. As expected, it was a drop in the bucket. Recovering his Source Energy Points was not something a little nutritional paste could solve. He needed high-purity Energy Stones, or... the influence of an event. And in this cold iron cage, both were impossibly far away.

Just then, the only heavy alloy door in the room emitted a faint pneumatic hiss and silently slid open to one side.

Qin Bing appeared in the doorway.

She was still wearing that crisp black Special Operations uniform. The insignia on her shoulder glinted with a cold, hard sheen beneath the pale lights. Her jet-black ponytail was immaculate, and her coldly beautiful face held no unnecessary expression, as though covered by a layer of ice that would never melt. Her gaze was as sharp as ever, like two precise searchlights that instantly locked onto Lin Xiao on the hospital bed, taking every minute reaction of his into account.

She held a thin electronic tablet, occasionally swiping across it with her fingertip.

"Awake?" Qin Bing's voice was utterly toneless, like the synthesized voice of a cold machine. She entered the room, and the alloy door silently closed behind her, completely cutting off every sound from outside. The air in the room seemed to freeze instantly, and the pressure rose sharply.

Lin Xiao tugged at the corner of his mouth, revealing a pale smile with his usual roguish air. This time, however, weakness and pain made it look somewhat forced. "I have Officer Qin to thank for that... I managed to pull through. Tsk... This place... is pretty unique, huh?" He tried to ease the atmosphere with a joke, but his eyes instinctively flicked toward a surveillance blind spot in the corner.

Qin Bing ignored his teasing. She walked to a stop roughly one meter from the hospital bed, a distance that allowed her to observe him clearly while maintaining a safe line of defense. She raised the tablet slightly, its screen facing Lin Xiao, though the angle prevented him from seeing its contents clearly.

"How do you feel?" she asked. Her tone was less concerned than a routine confirmation of the subject's physiological condition.

"Not bad... I'm not dying." Lin Xiao drew in a breath. The numbness in his right leg remained stubborn despite the inhibitor's suppression. "It's just this leg... It feels like it doesn't belong to me anymore." He deliberately acted worried about the toxin and frustrated by his loss of control over his body.

"The neuroparalysis caused by Viper's Kiss is temporary. The inhibitor can only freeze its activity for the moment and delay its spread. It cannot eliminate it." Qin Bing's voice remained cold, as though she were stating the findings of an autopsy. "Its core toxin will gradually erode your nerves, eventually causing permanent paralysis or even brain death. Unless there is a specially prepared serum, or... some extraordinary method capable of forcibly breaking it down."

Her eyes remained fixed on Lin Xiao's, capturing the slightest changes in his pupils and the faintest tremors in his muscles. Her final words clearly carried a probing intent.

Lin Xiao's heart jolted, but his face promptly filled with terror and despair. "P-Paralysis? Officer Qin! Your division... must have a way, right? I'm a victim! You can't just let me die!" He struggled to sit up, tugging at his wounds and grimacing in pain as cold sweat broke out across his forehead. He perfectly portrayed an ordinary student who had learned of terrible news and lost himself in panic.

Qin Bing's expression did not soften in the slightest, as though Lin Xiao's performance was merely a data stream requiring analysis in her eyes. She put away the tablet, folded her arms, and looked down at him from above, beginning the real "questioning."

"Lin Xiao, we retrieved fragments of the surveillance footage from the old factory and its surrounding area." Her voice was not loud, but it carried an invisible pressure. "Although most of the key areas were destroyed or disrupted, several segments are quite interesting."

She paused, her gaze stabbing toward Lin Xiao like an icicle.

"You entered the factory less than five minutes before Viper infiltrated it. How did you evade his first round of searching so precisely and appear in the core area?"

"Those traps you detonated—the support points, the gas barrels, the I-beam... The locations you chose were far too 'coincidental,' and the way you destroyed them was far too 'precise.' How could a student fleeing for his life have the time and ability to set all that up?"

"And the timing of the final steel beam's collapse... It happened to catch the instant Viper launched his killing blow at you. A reaction time of 0.8 seconds was far beyond the limit of an ordinary martial apprentice, and even approached that of a specially trained martial artist. How did you do it?"

Qin Bing's questions grew sharper and deadlier with each one, pounding toward Lin Xiao like a barrage. Every question struck at the core doubts in his actions that could not be explained by "coincidence" or "luck"! Her gaze was as keen as a blade, scrutinizing him as though it could pierce through every disguise, firmly locking onto every possible flaw in his expression!

The air in the room seemed to have been sucked dry, leaving only the monotonous, oppressive hum from the vent. The pale light fell across Lin Xiao's ashen face, and cold sweat slid silently down from his temples.

Play dumb? In the face of Qin Bing's painstaking interrogation and the mountain of hard evidence—the surveillance fragments—it seemed so pale and powerless.

Lin Xiao's heart pounded wildly inside his chest. The wounds across his back throbbed faintly from the tension, while the numbness in his right leg seemed to mock his predicament. He opened and closed his mouth, but his throat was too dry to make a sound. His mind raced beneath the combined weight of the depletion caused by -0.159 and the immense pressure Qin Bing brought to bear, searching for that sliver of hope.

"I..." He had barely spoken one word.

Suddenly!

Deep inside his right leg, the dark-green toxin that had been temporarily "frozen" by the inhibitor sent out an extremely faint yet crystal-clear... throb!

It was as though a sleeping venomous snake had been awakened by some aura of the same origin...